punishing super ego?

[Guest guest]

I went to what was supposed to be my last therapy appt. I've been going for 4-5

years, on and off. Today my therapist uncovered something new. Something so HUGE

that I am shocked we never discussed it before. We were wrapping up all of my

achievements. Then we went over what I felt might be my challenges/pitfalls and

how to cope if things come up. Somehow in explaining how the " never enough "

voice pops up, quieter now but nonetheless annoying. For example, in school if

the coach said run 3 miles on saturday I would run 5. I would never tell anyone,

I just felt that I had to do more to be equal. I recently decided to finish my

degree after 15 years. I was advised to take 1 to 2 classes. No more for my 1st

semester back after such a long break. So, feeling like I have no excuse for not

taking more because I am a stay-at-home mom I took 3. I have 4 kids-ages 7-12! I

know I mention this a lot but 2 are autistic. The autism is by far THE BIGGEST

CHALLENGE OF MY LIFE. It pretty much runsDid I cut myself ANY slack so I could

ENJOY school? Nope! So my therapist says this is my " punishing super ego " . I

have to guess that this is due to nada constantly telling me I am lazy, selfish,

don't deserve anything positive, every bad thing that happened was because I DID

deserve it. She hated when I would relax-even as an adult. I had 4 kids 5 and

under and if I took 5 min to myself she would tell me my husband would leave me

because my house was messy, I was lazy, he worked hard at his job so I should

work hard at mine etc. It got to the point that I didnt feel I deserved more

than 3 hours of sleep.

So I am wondering if any of you have experience with this, especially RECOVERY

from it. Im not able to go back for awhile and I just think this explains SOOOO

much.